I fell in love with you

with one frosty inhale

It took me right back

to that cabin in the north woods

your neighbor lent us for the weekend,

only to put us 100 miles from anywhere

in a snowstorm with a broken window

As the evening bit down

on our bones, we huddled

Your breath was like minty fumes

of ice water submerging mouth muscle

as we made love to keep warm

We didn't have to stay warm that way –

we could have just wrapped a blanket

around us and sat closer to the fire

But I was saving those flames

for the afterglow

Don't go.

I'm so afraid of the without of you.

Not for the hole you'll leave in me, but for the threat of it healing someday.

I've always been too good at recovering, at coping. I don't want to recovery from this. I want the torment of your final breath as a forever stain on my mirror.

It's the last thing you'll ever give me.

So don't go if I can't keep that final thing you give me forever.

Stay and haunt me.

You surely noticed

the lake became my lover today.

I am not easily seduced, but I, too,

have a weak-kneed one within

who lied today in its loving arms

and alternated between

melting and hardening.

I felt my body become a

wave’s plaything

as it danced me out to

deeper reaches.

Putty in its damp, blue hands,

my new lover

tousled my hair with wispy fingers,

serenaded with splash and wake,

titillated with glittery, sunbursting reflections

And carried me back to concrete

with dry, salty skin

and a mind having been

made love to.

I am thankful that it was you

watching it all,

watching me fall

from the other side of your

one-way window into my world.

You, with that aesthetic vision…

You, who knows my need for distance in tiny amounts…

You, who understands, respects, indulges…

You, for whom it may be unthinkable

to scorn me for my taste in lovers.

Yours is such a warm

heart to swim back to

after being caught and released.

Writing has often been my linguistic photography. Up until my 34th birthday, I started doing some real traveling, I barely ever took photographs. That forced me to write pieces that had specific memories attached to them. Reading them over uploaded the same remembrances that flipping through an old photo album do.

Now I photograph regularly, and so my writing has adjusted. It has become more an art than the science it used to be.

My recent method for ideas taps into my empathic nature. I have been writing pieces trying to use the point of view of others. Even if it's about things we have in common, just having a second voice in your head massages the imagination. Ever read a poem "written" by a dog? Same technique, just dialed down.

Wannabes wanna BE. Writers just wanna.

In my earliest writing days, I considered it important to refer to myself as a writer, even though I understood I wasn't much of one yet. It was my own game of "fake it till you make it" because if I waited for someone else to crown me or something, I would be waiting forever.

I'm grateful to myself that I faked it till I made it; the making it doesn't un-fake the faking it period.

Someday the wannabes may get to be. By the time they are, they are too busy with the wanna to know when it happened.

Remember our first time?

Our bodies were still so unfamiliar

an inadvertent tickle,

a collision of elbows,

a foot falling asleep

I recall that we laughed

at our clumsiness

as much as we attempted

the want of it all

Every time we would start over,

I could not restrain that dumb look that

would incite

another

giggle!

So exhilarating the sight of you

holding your hands upon your naked belly

as you would fight for breath

between the jubilant howls and happy tears

It felt unbelievably free

to let that easy breeze waft

under our laps and

between

our toes

We have since refined our finest art

with the deft fluency of

our lovers' affinity

In our time, you have shown me

so much

How it feels to feel reckless

abandon, to touch

lips to

risen skin, to

come with

another...

But on that first night, I believe

we were not yet making love,

but

rather, experimenting with the wellspring

of its evolution